FROM

If humans abuse nonhumans simply out of selfishness and greed, then
efforts by animal advocates to appeal to hearts and minds are simply a waste
of time. Even if animal abusers recognized how badly they treat nonhumans,
they wouldn’t care much. However, most people, in principle, oppose cruelty
to animals. Many people, perhaps a majority, describe themselves as “animal
lovers.” Yet, the vast majority of people remain complicit in factory
farming and other forms of animal abuse. Why is this so?

In the next essays, I will explore multiple contributing factors. This
week, I want to focus on the fear of death that haunts the human psyche,
often at a subconscious level, because we tend to repress mortality
anxieties. I discuss this in detail in my book Guided by the Faith of
Christ, and I also recommend The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker.

As a salve against mortality anxieties, humans tend to reject the notion
(which is well grounded in biology, anatomy, physiology, and paleontology)
that we are animals. Rightly or wrongly, many people think that all
nonhumans do is live, struggle, and die. Since we want to feel that,
somehow, we transcend death, we don’t want to feel as if this is also our
story. To see humanity and nonhuman creation as fundamentally similar is, in
the view of many, to see death as the definitive end of our existence.
Strangely, even many scientists who fully embrace Darwinian evolutionary
theory regard humans as “special” creations, though such a view seems to
lack any scientific basis.

These observations help explain why humans often have such little regard
for nonhuman life, but I think there are other reasons that humans
countenance animal abuse. I will continue to explore this topic next essay.

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